Fans Should Cheer Goodell’s Action

March 25, 2012

Is there anyone more avid than the Buffalo Bills fan who continues to show up for games deep into the cold of December in that windy, open-air stadium in Orchard Park?

Tens of thousands of the faithful do that. And tens of thousands more, including a lot of youngsters, continue to wear the team colors no matter how many games are lost year after year.

They especially are the ones who should be cheering the loudest in support of the swift and severe punishment meted out last Wednesday by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to four NFL coaches and managers.

He suspended New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton for the entire 2012 season. Goodell, in essence, banned Greg Williams, a former Saints and current St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator until further notice. And he suspended Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis for eight games and linebackers coach Joe Vitt for six games.

These are the men who worked to turn young professional football players into thugs, into hired goon squads who went out onto the field week after week to hurt and maim opposing players on purpose and for pay.

What they did is described with a jaunty and not-so-harsh sounding term: "bounty system" - as if it involved a sort of Wild West, Hole-in-the Wall gang of good-bad guys.

It was not that. The coaches and team leaders put out lists of opposing team players and the reward that would be paid to the players who hurt them enough to have them removed from the game. According to the Associated Press, "knockouts" were worth $1,500 and "cart-offs" $1,000.

This was serious business. According to the NFL, Saints defensive captain Jonathan Vilma offered $10,000 to any player who knocked then-Vikings QB Brett Favre out of the 2010 NFC championship game.

This whole sordid tale is of particular interest to Western New York because the apparent serial offender, Greg Williams, spent three years as head coach of the Bills a decade ago.

As you noticed, Goodell has not yet dealt with the players who were involved.

But he intends to.

"... I am profoundly troubled by the fact that players - including leaders among the defensive players - embraced this program so enthusiastically and participated with what appears to have been a deliberate lack of concern for the well-being of their fellow players," Goodell said.

In any sphere other than dollar-driven professional sports, what some of those players were trying to do would be defined as assault. They could be arrested on a criminal charge.

The die-hard fans we mentioned to begin with, those crazy people who sit through the worst sorts of weather just to see their beloved team play regardless of whether they have a snowball chance of winning, deserve much better than they have been getting.